At present, blood vessels usually are temporarily repositioned during surgery by exposing them, moving them to the desired new position, and holding them in that position using one or more small pins, one end of the or each pin being inserted into any suitable adjacent bone.
However, this practice has the drawback of curving the blood vessel around a small diameter pin and this can lead to an unacceptably high pressure on the wall of the blood vessel in contact with the pin, and even to kinking of the blood vessel; both of these events have the potential to damage the blood vessel.
A further drawback is that the relatively small diameter of the pin may allow the blood vessel to curve back into the area from which it needs to be temporarily removed for surgical purposes; this also risks damage to the blood vessel.
In the case of an anterior spinal fusion procedure, the iliac veins generally need to be temporarily repositioned during the spinal fusion procedure to fuse the L 4 and L 5 (or the L 5/S 1) vertebrae. Damage to the iliac veins can lead to a massive haemorrhage and it is therefore very important that the veins are both protected and temporarily repositioned during surgery, without any risk of damage to the veins.
A further potential problem is that anatomy is not standard from person to person, and can vary widely. It is therefore important that any device or technique for temporarily repositioning a blood vessel can be varied easily and rapidly, as necessary to suit different anatomies.